Jacob, in a message dated 3/9/99 , you wote:

"I would object to this by pointing out that there IS no "real" Idea. Ideas (or properties or essences, or whatever you want to call them) are not real "in themselves," but only describe the "way" real things "are". The Idea of things is actualy distinct from what makes them real (which Ibn Sina properly distinguished as Existence). Hume (I think) once asked of Kant a question that boiled down to what we would say was a trade of a $5 bill for the Idea of a $20. This was to point out that Kant really didn't believe that an Idea of $20 was real at all..."

Jacob, I think this objection is demonstrably fallacious: I wouldn't trade a $5 bill for a photocopy of a $20 bill, but that doesn't imply that I don't think it exists, only that I distinguish between it and the thing it's intended to represent. Moreover, this line of argument seems to presuppose a highly reductionist ontology and an essentialist interpretation of the concept of "existence". That is, I can accept that a $20 bill and the idea of a $20 bill do not exist in the same way, but not that ideas simply can't be said to "be real" or "exist" at all.
As a point of history, if Hume actually said this then he was clearly contradicting his own epistemology, which claims that we are only acquainted with the "external" world through the causal mediation of "ideas", which would be illusory if they were not real.

Don, I clearly quoted 'Bo' as the writer of that paragraph. I agreed with Bo in that an idea is not what EXISTS, except as just an idea. Therefore, any idea just IS. (Quine has insisted that anything that can just be conceived by the mind, IS.

I could not find in my encyclopedias highlights of Avicenna's philosophy. Still, it is clear that his distinction between IS and EXISTS, if he indeed made that ditinction very clearly, was basically grasped by Bo. This is remarkable, since that distinction has not been stressed as significant anywhere.

As you know, Quine has devoted decades writing about BEING, meaning, the IS. Anything that can be conceived by the mind, IS. Therefore, an idea IS. However, Bo stressed the contrast with the fact that only what is conveyed by the idea EXISTS. Quine has not made such distinction. Putting it to words, the idea of a $20 bill IS, while only the $5 bill EXISTS. This is Philosophy at its BEST.

Don, no reductionism nor existentialism here, but a matter of incredibly deep philosophical relevance. So much so, that I actually had been interested in the distinction between BEING and EXISTING since I realized that such a subject had been touched at the highest level in the Torah. Thinking that there might be a link with classical Greek thinkers, I looked for the ancient Greek words for BE and for EXIST, but got nowhere for lack of reliable informants.

I am now for the first time anywhere going to explain the fount of all I am saying:

YHWH (wrongly pronounced Yaweh, and worse even, Yehovah) --the personal God of the Israelites-- instructed Moses, his delegate, to tell the People of Israel, that He had two NAMES. One was I AM, and the other the Ineffable Name, the Tetragrammaton, i.e., YHWH, with the corresponding vowels, indicating how it was pronounced.

When reading that chapter of the Torah, I realized that both NAMES derive from the same root. The difference is that the second name, the one that remained until today, is derived from the verbal form of EXIST. It did not take me much time to figure out how it had been pronounced.
More research explained to me why and when its vocalization was forbidden, and why its pronounciation was forgotten.
It did not take me too long to understand the difference between Being and Existing.
I wrote several years ago an essay ON GOD'S NAMES, and have been waiting for the right Forum to publish it. Perhaps in my List...

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Jacob, I can most certainly enlighten you about Ibn Sina (Avicenna).
His fame as physician to several Persian princes, survives his influence as a philosopher. His philososophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing in God, in as the particulars, and in the human mind by way of abstraction, became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (being).

Rick, your information helps clarify the matter. Avicenna actually did NOT grasp the overarching separation between EXISTING and BEING. What Bo said appeared to me as suggesting the contrary!

Thus, I can truly say that I am the first to place those philosophical concepts in their right niches, to augment the Pantheon of Transcendent Thoughts:

EXISTING is distinct to BEING, and I shall explain this distinction when I write on God's Names!

I can safely put Avicenna in his own niche of great thinkers of the past, whose valid contributions to universal ideas have been integrated, and whose invalid ones have only historical interest.